About Me

My life was described by one of my editors as “impossibly exotic” – although really it was not my life, but me, that was the exotic, the uprooted plant, the one who didn’t belong, always living in someone else’s backyard...
Now I am back in Australia, the returning native learning to live where I was born. Writer, traveler, environmentalist. Author of The Isles of Glory trilogy (The Aware, Gilfeather, The Tainted); The Mirage Makers trilogy (Heart of the Mirage, Shadow of Tyr, Song of the Shiver Barrens); The Stormlord trilogy The Last Stormlord, Stormlord Rising, Stormlord's Exile, and writing as Glenda Noramly, a stand-alone book Havenstar. LATEST:
THE FORSAKEN LANDS
A clash of cultures and magic as traders and buccaneers hunt for spices and wealth in the Va-forsaken half of the world ... even as the unidentified darkness of plague and murder stalks their own land.
THE LASCAR'S DAGGER and THE DAGGER'S PATH available worldwide now! Final book, THE FALL OF THE DAGGER out mid-April.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Today's the big MS day...

...when I send off my manuscript [ "The Rogue Rainlord", book 1 of The Random Rain Cycle ], to my beta readers.

I am making a few last minute changes, doing a final spell check, and so on, attaching a bit of a sketch map ... and then off it goes to the hungry hawk-eyed vultures to tear apart.

Who are my beta readers?

Fellow published writers (bless them, wherever do they find the time?);

writers not yet majorly published;

fantasy fans with wide reading experience;

a speciality bookseller;

several part-time professional editor friends who love to read fantasy;

West Australian Perdy Phillips (professional artist who does the maps).

Some of them are people I have never met, some are friends, some are connected to the publishing business. They all have one thing in common: they love the genre and want the finished book to be special, so they are devastatingly honest, even when it hurts.

This last makes their praise, if it comes, very special indeed, because I know they really mean it. So as of tomorrow, I will do other things while I try to be patient and not develop a tic, or a desire to bit my nails, or a need to hit the gin.

Oh, note the title: here are the titles I finally decided on (but who knows whether these will be the final ones.)

Book 1: The Rogue RainlordBook 2: The Scarpen StormshiftersBook 3: The Watergivers of Washbone

Links

Awards

BEST FANTASY NOVEL OF THE YEAR Shortlisted Finalist2003: for The Aware; 2004: for The Tainted; 2006: for Heart of the Mirage; 2007: for The Song of the Shiver Barrens; 2009: for The Last Stormlord 2010: for Stormlord Rising 2011: for Stormlord's Exile 2014: The Lascar's Dagger 2015: The Dagger's Path 2016: The Fall of the Dagger